Adapt and Take On Challenges Around the World

In the 27 years Michael Zink has been with Citigroup, he has worked in Ivory Coast, Gabon, Tunisia, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, China and now Singapore.CreditCiti

By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

Dec. 20, 2015

Michael Zink is head of Southeast Asia and Singapore country officer for Citigroup, the global financial services company.

Q. In the 27 years you have been with Citigroup, you’ve worked in Ivory Coast, Gabon, Tunisia, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, China and now Singapore. Did you get the traveling bug growing up?

A. My family has been in Cincinnati for 200 years, and I lived in the same house in the same room until I left for university. So there was no indication that I was going to spend my life on the road. The first time I went oversees was to Edinburgh during a junior year abroad program while I was studying chemical engineering at university in Cleveland. After I graduated, I first joined a pharmaceutical plant in Indiana for a couple of years and then decided to join the Peace Corps and went to Kenya in 1983, where I met my wife, Betsy, and apart from two years in business school [at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern] and six months in Manhattan with Citi, I haven’t worked back in the United States ever since.

Q. What do you remember of your experience in the Peace Corps?

A. Frankly, I felt I was receiving more than I was giving. These people may be poor, but their society is still built around community and families, this notion that it’s not money that holds society together, but something else. It also gave me a much broader view of the world.

Q. What motivated you to go back to business school after that?

A. We’d spent two years in Africa, right after the first emerging market crisis [Mexico, 1982] had broken. We were digging water wells and building water tanks, and I realized we could be doing this for another 100 years and this wasn’t going to solve the issue. I wanted to understand the money issue. After I graduated I interviewed for a job with Citi. They saw my Africa experience on my C.V., and the guy asked me almost apologetically if I would be interested in taking a job there. Every young graduate wanted to work in London or Paris, so when I told him yes, and I was pretty sure my wife would also be onboard, I got the job.

Q. Going to Ivory Coast in 1989 must have sounded like an odd choice.

A. Wall Street had just crashed in 1987, but all my business school classmates still wanted to go there. I always knew emerging markets was what I wanted to do. Actually, I was delighted; the first time I’d worked in Africa, I’d worked for free, and now these guys were going to pay me!

We only stayed in Ivory Coast for six months and then moved to Gabon. Citi had had a big fraud issue at their branch there, and they wanted me to go to help sort it out. It was a small branch, with only me and seven Gabonese, and I literally had the key to the front door and the combination of the safe. This was my first experience running a team.

Q. What early lessons did you learn?

A. The need to adapt. As an American, I needed to slow down. Sometimes you have to let events unfold, you can’t control everything. You have to keep things under control, but the pace is different and you have to learn to balance expectations from headquarters.

In the different places I’ve worked, there have been a lot of differences in the way decisions are made, whether it’s the pace or the number of people involved. You may force a decision, but it won’t stick, so figuring out the right way to operate is very important. For example, in Asia, what’s important is what is not said in the room, the unspoken. But while you must adapt how you read the people in each country, there can be no compromising our corporate culture, our controls, how we engage with customers, security of data — none of this is any different wherever Citi is.

Q. Did you ever worry about security?

A. They did have a revolution in Gabon while we were there. My wife was jogging one day, and the French Foreign Legion parachuted in around her. That’s when we thought it was time to get out of the city for a while. She had to evacuate on an oil supply ship with our 14-week-old daughter, while I went on an offshore oil rig with my buddies to sit it out for three days. We have always been smart about our personal security.

Q. How was your experience in Russia?

A. The Soviet Union had collapsed in December 1991, and Citi got a license to operate in Russia back in October 1993. I got there in January 1994. It was really a start-up crew, and I was the head of corporate banking. We made a very important decision, which turned out to be a brilliant one. We decided to only hire people under 30, because if you had banking experience in the old Soviet Union, it may not be all that relevant. We just wanted young bright people we could train. It was hard, but it was fun. We started from nothing, and multinationals were just pouring in at the time. It was just awesome, probably my favorite job!

Q. From Russia you moved to Sydney. That must have felt very sedate.

A. It was another set of challenges and a great career development opportunity. I got there just before the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997-98. I was the head of corporate banking for New South Wales, a very sophisticated market, overseeing a small team of very senior bankers. This is the point deep enough in my career where I learned to operate by influence. There is no command and control at that point; you don’t tell people what to do, you’ve got to play your position, understand what they do best and help them succeed. You’ve also got to get respect by convincing them you bring something to the party. In that case, it was my connectivity to the people in the region. I couldn’t negotiate the deal with their clients, they had the relationship, but I could help them get the deal approved internally.

Q. You’ve had to ride a few financial crises. What have you learned from those experiences?

A. Treat people like adults. You give them the full information, they hear it from you, and there is no inconsistency in your message. And you have to tell them it’s a storm and that’s what we’re going to do about it. There is always a temptation to draw back to a narrower group of people, but that’s a huge mistake. The broader the engagement, the better.

Q. What advice would you give to a young person starting their professional life?

A. If you want to stand out and you want to rise quickly, go take on a problem that needs to be fixed. Don’t seek to enter a team that is already doing great and is highly thought of, because what impact are you going to have there?

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